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The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, is exhibiting a range of Hollywood Costumes from the most famous films of all time. It is definitely worth going, but I strongly recommend you get tickets in advance because they are almost sold out every day.

Beautiful gowns are exhibited, like the one Scarlet O’Hara used in “Gone with the Wind” or the beautiful dresses from “Elizabeth” or “Marie Antoinette”. There are classic costumes used by people like Russell Crowe in “Gladiator” or “Ben Hur”, what Harrison Ford wore in “Indiana Jones” or the amazing costume of Darth Vader. Other classics include the black dress of Audrey in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or “My Fair Lady”, two more from “Titanic”, “Moulin Rouge”, Batman and Catwoman, to the whole Addams Family. My favourites were Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” and Marilyn’s stunning white dress, oh god she had a figure.

I went to see the exhibition called “Ballgowns British Glamour since 1950” at the V&A.
It was, for me, a little bit dissapointing.
First I don’t know who curates this, but the selection was really sad, more the upper level which featured modern designers. The range was too disimilar, or too beautiful or just completely ridiculous.
I think the first part was fantastic and the curation was nice, with a wide variety of dresses, but it was just disappointing to go upstairs and I was kind of waiting for the best part of the show.
Anyway, if you like dresses you should go, it’s nice and the V&A always has a lot of other things to see even if you don’t like the exhibition.
I runs until January 2013 at the V&A, for more info check here

What is it with this new wave of people who think that can go and ruin pieces of art just because they “feel like it”? I’m kind of pissed off today reading that an idiotic arrogant nobody who professes himself to be on the same level as Marcel Duchamp claims that he improved a piece of art just by putting his name in the corner?

It sounds like a marketing strategy to me – someone looking to win themselves 15 minutes of fame. What a jerk. If you want to be famous, do something to change the world, train for the Olympics, train to be a great artist yourself instead of hanging on the coat tails of someone else. Fame used to be a by-product of talent, now for many it seems to be the sole aim. Nothing worth having is achieved quickly or easily. Just watching the London 2012 Games proves that.

This is slightly different to the old Spanish woman who accidentally destroyed a fresco in her local church whist trying to restore it (read my post about it here) as I can understand that for her age maybe she didn’t know what she was doing. But this idiotic action in London, in the Tate, is inexcusable – this is nothing more than vandalism. I really hope they can restore the artwork.

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a very interesting person.
She loved travelling and loved art. She was an art collector and a philanthropist.
She began to collect art in 1890, bringing art to America from the Middle East, Central Europe, Paris, Egypt, America, and Asia.
She rapidly built a world-class collection primarily of paintings and statues, as well as tapestries, photographs, silver, ceramics and manuscripts, and architectural elements such as doors, stained glass, and mantelpieces. The Gardner collection includes work by some of Europe’s most important artists, such as Botticelli’s Madonna and Child with an Angel, Titian’s Europa, and Raphael’s The Colonna Altarpiece, and Diego Velázquez.
Her favourite destination was Venice, Italy and I don’t blame her for that.
Eccentric, weird for her time, she had exquisite artist friends as John Singer Sargent, Henry James, Okakura Kakuzo, Francis Marion Crawford, to mention just a few.
After her husband’s death, she hired architect Willard T. Sears to build a museum modeled on the Renaissance Palazzo Barbaro of Venice. After the construction she placed every object of her collection according to her personal taste. The eclectic gallery installations, paintings, sculpture, textiles, and furniture from different periods and cultures combine to create a rich, complex and unique narrative.

The museum opened in 1903 with a big opening which included a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
After she died in 1919, she left $1 million to support the museum, along with strict orders not to touch how the house was left after she died. The house remains like that.

The new addition to the Gardner Museum remains welcoming, the expansion space adds a touch of colour and magnifies the initial idea of Gardner of celebrate international music, art and food!

“Do not look hard for meaning here. I am not an art historian. I am an artist. That is all you need to know”
With this promising entry, the exhibition starts. You enter the imaginary world that lives in Grayson Perry’s head.
The exhibition combines objects that belong to the regular exhibition of the British Museum and some objects that were created based on inspiration of those first named.
But what is the meaning of this comparison? It doesn´t really matter.
There is a central figure in this show and it is a bear that is called Alan Measles. This 50 year old teddy is the God and guru that rules the cosmology of Grayson Perry to, sometimes, a scary level.
The journey around every object is absolutely delicate and amusing. Grayson Perry is a potter, and a refined one at that, the first potter to win a Turner Prize. I was impressed not only with the vases, but more with the illustrations that decorate them – there is a message behind the drawings or the words written on each vase.
There are shrines, rugs, vases, drawings, maps, and lot of ‘souvenirs of pilgrimage’, as he refers to them.

Grayson Perry is a character himself. He has a public persona called Claire, his female alter-ego.

There are cultural conversations between this objects. Perry says that “cultures borrow and adapt” and you can see this in the different artifacts that the exhibition displays. “Craftsmen make artifacts they think will appeal to visitors from abroad. Sometimes they get it wrong in a charming way”. These artifacts are linked to the creation of the new ones that are exhibited. Perry spent 2 years in the British museum thinking about this exhibition and looking for objects behind closed doors.

He took his teddy bear and childhood hero, Alan Measles, across Bavaria on a highly decorated Kenilworth AM1 motorcycle. The motorcycle is in the exhibition as well. It is absolutely stunning.

This bike has a shrine on the back for his teddy bear, whose inaugural voyage, Ten Days of Alan, takes them across Bavaria on a mission of reconciliation with their old enemies from Germany who fought the British in his imaginary battles. They wanted to make peace.

I was amazed by this exhibition. It’s a must see. You have one more week. Go.

French artist Jocelyn Grivaud has created this interesting collection to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Barbie.
It´s a fabulous idea where each doll represent a master piece in the History of Art. As well is a good way to see different representation of women in the Art and how the concept of Beauty has changed with time. Brilliant idea.

So all the tickets sold out very quickly in November, one week after the exhibition opened. I never thought it was going to be that popular. I found out because I went to a lecture with one of the curators of the National Gallery, Dr Scott Nethersole, and he said that all the tickets were sold out. Must be good, I thought.

He mentioned that they had worked for over 6 years to put the Leonardo exhibition together.
So, I had to go.

5am and the alarm clock sounds. 6.30am in the queue. 100 people already! By 8.30 am the queue is surrounding the building, I really can’t believe it. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life. And I can’t believe that people are so into art to go to that amount of effort, it seems around 80% of the people queuing are 50 or older. The guy behind us is Japanese, and tells us that he came from Japan the day before just for the exhibition! That’s impressive.

I enter the building at 10.15 am and ask the security guy if he’s seen anything like this before. He tells me that he’s seen 3 exhibitions very popular in the National, free ones, but in 17 years, nothing at all like this. He says that there was a couple queuing from 23.30 on a Saturday night to get into the exhibition on Sunday morning.

After 4.5hrs we have our tickets, I don’t think I’ve been this excited since I saw Paul Mc Cartney live at the O2.

It’s packed, with queues to see each of the pictures, so I try to do it my way and sneak in when I see a spot.

What it is more fascinating is the amount of originals they’ve put together. Mainly the paintings he did for the Court of Milan, when Ludovico Sforza was his patron.
There are many sketches that belong to The Queen, but as well they’ve brought together originals from France, Poland, from private collections like this new discovery “Salvatore Mundi” which they recently discovered was painted by Leonardo.
There is a room with the two ‘Virgin of the Rocks’ paintings together, the Louvre one and the London one, and in the middle a lot of sketches that Leonardo drew in preparation for this amazing paintings.

After you finish in the low floor, there’s another room upstairs with all the sketches for the Last Supper, including an image of the original fresco and all the studies for each character, the expression on the faces, hands. It is really really fabulous. There’s a video as well with the 2 curators speaking about the paintings.

I really recommend you if you are into art, don’t miss the chance to see this exhibition, hard work yes, but totally worth it.

So to this government, who insist on cutting arts funding, please, I invite you come along to the National Gallery at 6am on a rainy morning to see how many people are INTO ART, how many people do care about paintings and culture.